5 minute read
Bridge to Nowhere
IT WAS CREATED TO HELP TURN SOLDIERS FRESH FROM THE TRENCHES OF WWI INTO PIONEERING FARMERS, creating a vital road link for what it was hoped would be a thriving and productive settlement; instead, the bridge across the Whanganui River for the Mangapurua Valley Soldiers Settlement is now a bridge to nowhere, serving only as an eerie reminder of misguided optimism and folly and failure in the face of unforgiving land.
It had started out so well. The New Zealand government was eager to reward soldiers returning from ‘the war to end all wars’ and to establish more farms for domestic consumption and all-important exports needed to help pay for the war. The Discharged Soldier’s Settlement Act of 1915 not only allowed for land claimed by the government to be parcelled out to returning soldiers, but also for the provision of loans to those soldiers to fund their initial start-ups. Thousands of returning veterans would sign up for the scheme in the years that followed.
The first of these came to the Mangapurua land parcels in 1917. Their adventure began either with some robust bushwhacking or a steamer trip up the river, followed by the crossing of a precarious wooden swing bridge, and a good hike to reach their designated claim; then they pitched their tents – on whatever level ground they could find on the steeply sloping terrain – and began months of backbreaking work. It was remote, hilly and untamed land, with all work carried out by hand, and many of the returned servicemen must have been reminded of their previous employment as ‘Diggers’, the nickname Kiwi soldiers gained in the First World War thanks to their prowess at earthworks. The first weeks were spent with slashers and axes, laying waste to the native bush, which was then burnt off leaving a wasteland that must surely have also reminded them of the burnt and battered battlegrounds of Europe.
It was remote, hilly and untamed land, with all work carried out by hand.
Then huge sacks of seed were manhandled up the slopes, the planting began, and they looked to help each other build houses and workshops, producing the timber onsite in seemingly endless two-man pit-sawing marathons. Hard yakka indeed, but with the optimism of youth and the sense of purpose and comradeship they shared, many of these pioneers would remember those times as tough but also almost idyllic.
Many also had a goal insight – the imminent arrival of wives. A large number of these were war brides, often English or Scottish women, who must have wondered what on earth they had gotten themselves into; with no running water, ‘rudimentary’ sanitation, and medical care and stores days away, this was true pioneer living. And yet, like the men, they simply got to work and set about creating a community and starting families. A school was established, there were regular Saturday night dances and – according to the excellent history of the area, The Bridge to Nowhere by Arthur P Bates, there were crazes for DIY plum wine and home brewed beer, picnics, and sports matches. At its peak the settlement programme was one of the last large-scale pioneering efforts in New Zealand history, with 30 farms in Mangapurua and 16 in nearby Kaiwhakauka.
It was not to last. The country’s brief post-war recovery collapsed spectacularly in the early 1920s and there followed a decade of turmoil with falling prices, low yields and a run of bad weather that continually washed-out roads and bridges. The valiant settlers struggled on, vainly attempting to patch roads, and appealing for a concrete bridge to replace their timber one, while continuing to scratch out a living. But they also had to repay their government loans, they often had limited farming experience, and those that did were recognising that the land was simply not productive enough to be profitable. Soon, some were making the heartbreaking decision to walk off their land, and inevitably this turned to an exodus.
And then, with what has been described as ‘almost fictional irony’, in 1936 the new concrete bridge was completed. By that time only a handful of farms remained in production and the writing was on the wall, but the bridge had been promised and the bridge had been budgeted for and so the bridge was built. The government had seen it forming part of a highway travelling eastwards across the North Island from New Plymouth, and it was just what the settlers needed. But it was ten years too late.
The new bridge also didn’t stop the constant road wash outs that plagued the area. In 1942, when there were just three families holding out in Mangapurua and the government’s focus was firmly on another distant war, a particularly heavy storm wrecked the road and the Public Works Department refused to restore it. In May of that year Cabinet ordered the remaining farmers out, and the last stalwarts packed up and walked or rode horses off the land they had spent decades trying to tame. The Mangapurua Valley Soldiers Settlement was at an end.
A variety of hiking, biking, kayaking, and boating options are available if you want to see the Bridge to Nowhere for yourself.
